Corpus

by Rory Clements

  ‘Surely you’re not suggesting that the Nazis got one of their agents in England to kill her in revenge for passing papers to Arnold Lindberg?’

  ‘I think they’re capable of it. Don’t you?’

  Wilde nodded. Yes, Himmler and Heydrich were capable of it, but so was Stalin and his new secret service brute Yezhov. ‘It’s also a possibility that Lindberg’s German Communist Party friends thought she had betrayed him to the Nazis.’

  ‘You have a vivid imagination. That’s not the way the KPD thinks.’

  ‘It’s exactly how Stalin thinks, Horace, and you know it. What about you? Did you have any cause to wish her dead, Horace? Were you obeying orders from Moscow?’

  ‘What is it with you, Tom? You know I was fond of Nancy. I have answered your questions and now you’re fucking insulting me.’

  But Wilde wanted to push him further. ‘What else did you ask of her? Did you ask her to spy on her father?’

  ‘Tom, this is gibberish!’

  ‘Answer me one more question then: where was Comrade Kholtov on the day Nancy died?’

  Without a word, Horace Dill spat a mouthful of brown strands from his cigar butt onto the path at Wilde’s feet and slowly walked away, back towards his rooms, cigar still unlit. Just before the arched entrance to his stairs, he stopped and turned his head. ‘He was with me in my fucking room, if you must know. All day. Discussing the revolution.’

  ‘So where is he now?’ Wilde had Nancy’s last letter in his pocket and he still hadn’t used it. ‘Horace,’ he called after him. ‘She felt betrayed. Why should she feel betrayed?’ The words echoed around the court. But Dill had already vanished, shuffling up the stinking stone stairway to his rooms.

  CHAPTER 23

  Once again, Cambridge was bustling with shoppers and a stream of cyclists. The facade of a butcher’s was decorated with the feathered corpses of geese, ducks, turkeys, all hung by the neck from a string across the top of the shop window. Dozens of them, alongside a score of rabbits, great haunches of pork, venison and beef. But there was, too, that feeling of the town closing down for Christmas. The long platform would be packed with young men waiting for trains home.

  Tom Wilde watched the passers-by as he walked along Trumpington Street. Three people had died and still the world kept turning. He thought about Nancy Hereward and the huge risk she had taken to help a man in Nazi Germany, a man she had never met. Was her death the price she had paid for her action – or was it connected with what she had discovered later, in her father’s study?

  Now Wilde knew the truth about Philip Eaton, it begged the question of whether the secret service had been watching Nancy all along. Had they followed her in Berlin? That at least would explain how Eaton knew about her trip. And what of Dill’s suggestion that Eaton might have wished to recruit Wilde? He had to admit it was perhaps the most plausible explanation for Eaton’s interest in him.

  Something was happening; the world was churning, and the police were sitting on their arses. Think harder, Wilde urged himself. The answer is there. Think.

  *

  Philip Eaton was drinking in the taproom of the Bull Hotel. He seemed a little surprised to see Wilde, but greeted him amiably and took out the address book he had stolen from the Langley murder scene and placed it in front of him on the bar. ‘There you are,’ he said.

  Wilde ordered a whisky. When it was poured, he turned to Eaton. ‘Did you manage to find Margot Langley?’

  ‘There is a number for her in Germany, but no one answers the telephone. And I gather the police have had no luck in contacting her either.’

  ‘In Germany? Interesting. Well, the parents must have known her whereabouts even if no one in the village did.’

  ‘Maybe she’s not there. The address could have been written down years ago. I’ll keep trying the number.’ Eaton took a sip of his own drink. ‘So what’s new?’

  ‘I’ll get on to that. First, has Superintendent Bower discovered anything?’

  ‘He’s made a few arrests. Known troublemakers and would-be revolutionaries, but no one is being held. Plodding along is the best I can say for Mr Bower. Another Scotch?’

  ‘Make it a double.’

  Eaton ordered, then folded his arms and gave Wilde a full-on stare. ‘Well?’

  Wilde took the letter from his pocket and placed it on the bar in front of Eaton.

  The younger man placed the palm of his hand on the paper. ‘What’s this?’

  ‘A letter from Nancy to the Socialist Club secretary, Dave Johnson. It arrived after she died. You met Johnson, didn’t you, at the Kholtov rally?’

  ‘Yes, briefly. I believe he found communism in the skies above Flanders. Not alone in that, I suspect.’

  ‘Read it . . .’

  Eaton looked down at the handwritten note. A minute later, he raised his eyes.

  ‘This is quite something. Did Johnson just hand it over to you?’

  ‘In a manner of speaking.’

  ‘What do you think she’s saying in this letter?’

  ‘I was hoping Horace Dill might know, but he told me to fuck off. It occurred to me that it might be Horace who had persuaded her to spy on her father.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I think it’s a possibility.’ A possiblity? Even as he said the words, he realised he was failing his own test. What had he said to Maxwell and Felsted? Make me prove my points, demand evidence . . . and if there is not enough evidence, then keep an open mind. Become a detective . . .

  ‘This magazine, North Sea,’ Eaton said. ‘That doesn’t help us at all. But this list of names . . . I’d love to know more about that.’

  ‘As an MI6 officer, I rather hoped you might know something already, Eaton.’

  Eaton laughed. ‘Yesterday it was MI5, now it’s MI6.’

  ‘Well, Horace has put me right. He also gave me an explanation for your interest in me.’

  ‘Did he really? Did he also tell you that his telephone is tapped and that every secret service in the world is spying on him? I rather think Messrs Jung and Freud would enjoy a few sessions with Comrade Dill.’

  Wilde laughed too. ‘He thought you might be trying to recruit me. Can you believe that?’

  ‘How wonderful. Were you flattered or horrified? And tell me, if some mythical secret agent did try to recuit you to British intelligence, what would you say?’

  ‘I’d tell him I’m American, so no deal.’

  Eaton smiled again. ‘I’m sure Six would be sorry to hear it.’ He took another sip of his drink. ‘Now – to the matter in hand. You might like to know that I’ve been back to Kilmington. Personal instructions of Geoffrey Dawson, editor of my august journal. It seems that Cecil Langley was one of the King’s oldest friends. I would never have thought it – polar opposites in my book, except for the politics. What do you make of that, Wilde? I would never have expected a country gentleman like Cecil Langley to be to our monarch’s taste. Cocktails and dodgy divorcees are more his sort of thing.’

  ‘Do you disapprove?’

  ‘They’re bores, the lot of them. As for the King and Langley, I simply can’t imagine what they ever found to talk about – apart from their mutual admiration for Herr Hitler.’

  ‘One of the torn-up pictures was of the King.’

  ‘You should be a detective.’

  ‘And you should be an MI6 officer.’

  Eaton shook his head, downed his drink, then signalled the barman. ‘You don’t give up, do you?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘Yes, I certainly do. If I reach a cul-de-sac, I turn round and look for another road out.’

  ‘And what if the answer lies within the cul-de-sac itself?’

  ‘You’re talking in riddles now.’

  ‘No, I’m not. Let’s talk about Margot Langley. She marries a man but then bolts. The only telephone number for her is a German one.’

  The barman poured two more drinks. Eaton warmed his whisky glass with his hands. ‘Cherchez l’hom
me. Then I’d guess she went after a man. My lady friends tell me that those SS troopers look remarkably attractive in their black uniforms with silver flashes and high boots. And it’s a Munich number. But going to Munich is nothing unusual these days; there are scores of young English men and women in the city, either at Baroness Laroche’s finishing school or at university. I think they all go there hoping to catch a glimpse of the Führer.’

  ‘You seem to know a lot about it.’

  ‘None of it’s secret, Wilde. Adolf Hitler is more accessible than my plumber. Loves to be seen by his adoring public driving around in his big Mercedes or eating his vegetarian spaghetti at the Osteria Bavaria. He would be remarkably easy to assassinate, but of course that’s not the way we do things, is it? Unlike you Americans with your habit of shooting presidents when you tire of them.’

  ‘Whereas you Brits just shuffle your kings away when they think of marrying Americans.’

  ‘Very funny.’

  Wilde picked the address book up and flicked through it. ‘Are there any other names of note?’

  ‘Scores of them, hundreds. Most of the Cabinet, the King’s private number at Fort Belvedere, foreign potentates, dukes and duchesses. Cecil Langley had a finger in quite a few pies, I think. He even had Wallis Simpson’s private number. I’m afraid I couldn’t see much point in ringing them all. I’d have got very short shrift.’

  ‘No. But I suspect there will be a crossover with that North Sea list. If we knew the names on that, we might start seeing connections.’

  Eaton shook his head. ‘I don’t think we’d get very far. My editor is pretty clear that this is a Bolshevik attack on the British establishment. He tells me that the Cabinet believes Stalin’s agents are minded to destabilise the country just at a time when it’s facing its biggest crisis since the war. There are real fears of insurrection in support of the King. Spain could happen here. Civil war. When revolutionaries see trouble brewing, they seize the ladle to stir the cauldron all the more furiously.’

  Out of the corner of his eye, Wilde caught a face he thought he recognised in the wall mirror behind the bar. He turned sharply but the man had gone.

  ‘Seen a ghost?’ Eaton asked.

  ‘Not a ghost – our Russian friend, Yuri Kholtov.’

  ‘What in God’s name is he still doing here? I thought he would have gone back to Russia by now.’

  Looking for you, probably, thought Wilde. ‘Perhaps he’s thirsty,’ he said. He put his whisky down on the bar and walked briskly towards the doorway where he had spotted Kholtov. A gust of cold wind told him that the Russian had gone from the front door. He pushed it open and stepped outside. Kholtov was hurrying south down Trumpington Street, huddled into his coat. Wilde caught up with him easily.

  ‘Comrade Kholtov, I spotted you in the bar. Let me buy you a drink.’

  The big Russian looked startled. ‘I was just passing. It seemed a pleasant place.’

  ‘Indeed, it is. And if anywhere in Cambridge has vodka, it’ll be the Bull. Come and share a glass with Mr Eaton and myself.’

  ‘I must go. I am expected by Professor Dill. I am staying at his lodgings.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about Horace. He can wait.’ Wilde pulled persuasively at Kholtov’s arm. ‘Come and tell us more about the war in Spain and what’s going on in Moscow.’

  Kholtov wrenched his arm away from Wilde’s grasp. For a brief moment Wilde saw behind the affable veneer. ‘I said no, Professor Wilde. Now if you will excuse me, please.’ He nodded sharply and turned to head off again.

  Wilde touched him on the shoulder. ‘Comrade Kholtov,’ he said. ‘If it’s college you want, you’re going the wrong way.’

  *

  On her return from the office, Lydia wrote a note asking Tom to come round, and posted it through his letterbox. Then she braced herself to go up to the spare room that Leslie Braithwaite had stayed in. He had succeeded in turning it into a rubbish dump. She stood in the doorway, arms folded across her threadbare pullover. Doris had tidied the room thoroughly, airing it with the window open all morning, but it still didn’t feel quite right.

  It was one of the better rooms in the house, facing south-east to catch the best of any morning sun on offer through a pair of light, sunflower yellow curtains. There were shelves with books for the use of visitors, including copies of the poetry anthologies she had published. Who wouldn’t have preferred to spend the night there – or even a week – rather than camp at the roadside or in the woods?

  She let out a weary sigh. Was she really just a soft touch? ‘They’re not pet cats, you know, Lydia,’ Tom Wilde had said to her. ‘They won’t all purr; some will scratch and bite.’ Well, she had been well and truly savaged by Leslie Braithwaite. At least there had been no ‘Told you so’ from Tom, which was a small blessing.

  Lydia felt profoundly depressed about Leslie Braithwaite’s attack. She had always believed that good trumped evil and that if you treated people well they would treat you well in return. Braithwaite had disproved her theory in the most devastating way. Surely, he couldn’t have had any cause to imagine that his rough advances would be welcomed? She supposed a man alone on the road might be sexually frustrated, but whatever a man’s background or circumstances, there could be no excuse for the way he had behaved. He simply didn’t care. He had wanted sex and he was going to take it. The shame of it was that she would now look with less charity on any other hunger marcher or unemployed man in need of a meal and a roof over his head. But then she found herself laughing at the very notion; she’d always be a soft touch. You don’t change your nature that easily.

  Doris had stripped the bed and called in the pest man to fumigate the mattress. She had probably beaten the curtains, too. Braithwaite had taken down many of the books, read a page or two, then inexplicably torn them out and screwed them up. Perhaps he hadn’t liked what he read. And he had spat the brown juice of his foul chewing tobacco on the floor. Now everything had been cleaned up and put back in its proper place. On the little table, beside the single iron bedstead, beneath the table lamp, Doris had deposited the few belongings that had been left: the toothbrush Lydia had given him, a spare pair of socks, and the screwed-up pages from her books.

  She tossed the toothbrush in the wastepaper basket. The socks could be washed and go to charity. Hating to think of a book incomplete, she began methodically going through the rumpled pages, smoothing them flat, and putting them back into the books to which they belonged.

  Among the pages was a scrap of writing paper that clearly had not come from a book. Lydia switched on the bedside lamp and straightened it. A few words were scrawled on the paper in black ink, including a four-digit number preceded by the word May. She frowned, then realised it was a Mayfair telephone number. Then there was a name, Carr, and another name, Brandham H, both written with a pencil. And that was it.

  Why would a man like Braithwaite, an unemployed coal miner, have a Mayfair telephone number in his possession? Was it something he had picked up in the street? Perhaps he had used it to wrap his plug of tobacco. She looked at her wristwatch. Tom should arrive soon. He might make sense of it.

  The doorbell rang. Lydia took the scrap of paper and went to the front door. It was Hartmut Dorfen, beaming, carrying a bottle of French wine. He threw wide his arms, dazzling her with his blue eyes and offering his lips up for a kiss.

  ‘Forgive me, I’m a little early.’

  Lydia accepted the kiss and wished very much that she had changed out of her cords and old pullover into a dress.

  *

  In the Bull, Wilde finished his drink and took out his wallet to pay the bill.

  ‘These are on me,’ Eaton said. ‘The Times will pay.’

  ‘Very generous, your editor.’

  ‘Not sure I’d go along with that, old boy, but I think you count as a genuine contact. Did you catch up with your ghost?’

  ‘Oh, he was real enough. It was Kholtov, looking very shifty. I told him you were here and offered to buy
him a drink, but he rushed off saying he was meeting Horace Dill.’

  ‘Perhaps it was the mention of my name that put him off. A lot of people don’t like newspapermen.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  Wilde turned to go, but Eaton put a hand on his arm. ‘What now?’

  Wilde shrugged. ‘Perhaps your editor’s correct. Perhaps the commies are taking advantage of the constitutional crisis.’

  ‘Well, keep in touch. Not sure how long I’ll be up in Cambridge, but you know how to find me.’

  Wilde shook hands, and strode out of the pub along Trumpington Street, towards King’s Parade. With Great St Mary’s on his right, he looked across to the wonder of King’s College Chapel. Turning right into Market Street he suddenly stopped.

  By now, the shops were all closed and most people had gone home. He stood in a shop doorway and waited in the cold air. Two minutes, five minutes. He looked at his watch. It had to be enough. He turned and retraced his steps.

  Kholtov was standing beside Eaton at the bar of the Bull, in the place vacated just a few minutes ago by Wilde. They were deep in conversation; Kholtov appeared to be showing Eaton something. If either of them had looked up they would have seen Wilde in the mirror, but they were too engrossed to notice him.

  He walked up behind them. ‘Eaton, Mr Kholtov . . .’

  They both turned at his voice.

  ‘I lost your card, Eaton,’ Wilde said. ‘I wonder, do you have another? Some way of contacting you when you leave Cambridge?’

  ‘Of course.’ Eaton pulled a card from his inside pocket and proffered it without missing a beat. ‘Here you are. Are you going to stay for another Scotch now you’re back with us? Mr Kholtov took up your offer of a drink after all – rather disappointed you were gone, I think. Poor chap’s stuck with me.’

  ‘No, no. Must be on my way.’ Wilde held out his hand to Kholtov. The Russian’s right hand was clenched tight. He transferred whatever was in it to his left hand so that he could shake Wilde’s hand.

  ‘Another time, Professor Wilde.’